The Fix: Damian Thompson explores the murky world of modern addiction

This is a guest post by Milo Yiannopoulos, founder and
Editor-in-Chief of The
Kernel. He is acquainted with the author of this book and
briefly quoted in it.

We've all experienced it: that niggling feeling that you might
be spending a bit too much time flicking and swiping at your
iPhone. But if Telegraph blogs editor and author Damian
Thompson is right, the amount of time we spend attached to our
devices these days isn't just an irritating twenty-first century
habit: it's a sign that compulsive behaviours of all kinds are
exploding in the modern world.

When Thompson asked to interview me for the online gaming
chapter of his book, I
was sceptical about his thesis of cross-pollination between the
social gaming companies of Silicon Valley and the gambling emporia
of Las Vegas. But I came to be convinced: the flow of engineers,
for one thing, between the two industries is staggering -- though
understandable, when you think about what each is up to.

Every tiny incremental advance made in digital technology is now
being hijacked by the gaming industry -- and by other sorts of
technology company -- in order to hook users in, contributing to a
consumer environment in which an abundance of choice and myriad
little pleasures are leaving us paralysed by the volume and variety
of those reassuring little dopamine hits we get when scarfing down
a chocolate bar or completing another level on Angry
Birds.

Thompson explains how an intimate knowledge of human psychology
is breeding addiction experts, some of whom are using their power
for good, and some for ill, but all of whom are able to
effortlessly glide between the worlds of traditionally addictive
pursuits, such as alcoholism and gambling, and the new
technology-driven mayhem that has led to thousands of internet
addiction clinics springing up all over the world.

He cites the case of Adi Jaffe, a
Los Angeles-based academic psychologist at UCLA who was once one of
LA's trendiest upmarket drug dealers. Jaffe reformed after a
motorcycle accident in which he was found with a large quantity of
cocaine stitched into his leather jacket. Now Jaffe is approached
for his insight into the addictive personality regularly by
companies who operate gambling services, though he declines the
contracts, saying he's "not in the business of creating addicts any
more".

The resourcefulness of seedy online entrepreneurs creating
"sticky" experiences at the roulette table isn't the only way
technology is starting to run out of control. In fact, says
Thompson, the technology industry has to face up to the fact that
it cannot have shiny new iPhone apps promising slick geolocated
experiences without the unhealthy behaviours that go with them.
Cute marketing campaigns by Valley start-ups about "connected,
open" platforms are really code for furiously well-researched and
endlessly tested advertising delivery platforms.

As Silicon Valley investor and blogger Paul Graham recently wrote, it's
the very same advances in A/B testing and other forms of user experience tweaking, of the
type that have made Angry Birds and Farmville so
successful, that are also creating a global generation of addicts.
Every time a platform is upgraded it is taking advantage of
refinements whose purpose is to keep middle aged men in a
despairing cycle of, to give one example, porn addiction.

That might sound far-fetched, but the entrepreneurial spirit of
technology is now infusing the social lives of young people who
take the sorts of risks with their bodies that start-up founders
take with their bank accounts. Thompson's purpose in this new book
is to ask: are we sure we know what we're doing to ourselves?

The Fix runs the full gamut of food, shopping, sex,
gaming and pornography addictions in the modern world. It explains
how each is sliding dangerously out of control, suggesting that the
primary purpose of government in the future may be the management
and treatment of its citizens' addictions.

It also, with gentle but terrifyingly persuasive regularity,
reminds us of the red thread running through all this: the rapid
advances in technology that are creating a widening gap between the
evolutionary progress of our bodies and minds and the
disorientating world around us.

Damian Thompson's The Fix is published by Collins,
£20.

Edited by Nate Lanxon

Comments

That's pretty cool that your pal's written a book. A friend of mine just completed a eight-volume sci-fi novel but it's costing him a fortune in photocopying to self-publish.

Hyvä Veli-verkosto

May 25th 2012

It's a good read. You wouldn't know that Damian's a papist.

Benedict

May 29th 2012

just another hysterical cop out of personal responsibility, blaming it all on the nebulous concept of addiction. i was looking in an 'addictions' publication, at a list of self help groups - of 51, 34 were 'blah blah anonymous' including drink and drugs (obviously) but also, obesity, eating, smoking, depressives, mood...the list is endless - if you can identify it as a maladaptive behaviour, stay anonymous and form a group.